Zakki Mokuroku

Nico Nico Douga

As I mentioned in my last post, I usually spend my free time at Nico Nico Douga, the Japanese video-sharing website like YouTube.

This site, which earned the Japanese Good Design Award in 2007, is famous for its unique commenting system.

 

Here is the captured movie from Nico Nico Douga transfered to YouTube (you need to have an account to access Nico Nico Douga). See the white texts sliding from right to left? Those texts do not exist in the original movie. They are the comments posted by the viewers. The comments are overlaid directly on the video synced to the specific time. This allows the viewers to post a comment to certain scenes and it also creates a sense of a shared watching experience.

Today, 1 in 3 Japanese in their twenties have the account of Nico Nico Douga (Wow, I didn't know that until the last second). It is one of the most rapidly growing website in past five years.

Zakki Mokuroku

Well, so here is my blog, Zakki Mokuroku, which means "list of memorandums" in Japanese. I named it so to remind myself that I don't have to think about writing formally.

To say the truth, I am still not sure what to write for this blog yet... To be precise, I still do not understand the difference between the personal blog and professional blog.

Anyways, I will try to be creative as I can in this blog. Though I can't promise to be humorous since I'm not writing this in my mother language (which is Japanese).

Let me talk a little about myself. I was born and raised up in Japan until 7, then moved to California because of my father's job. Seven years later, I moved to Oregon and lived there for a year, but then moved back to Japan and lived there for rest of the high school years. And now, back in US, I'm studying at University of Oregon. Yes, I know, pretty complicated.

Still, I can clearly say that Japanese is my dominant language. I look around Japanese news sites on my free time. Somestimes I check movie sites like YouTube or Nico Nico Douga, which I will probably write about it next time.

One of my greatest hobbies is to draw illustrations. Not like those gorgeous paintings made by "arty" people but more cartoonish ones. Something like this.

 

I guess that's about it for today. I'm not sure how this blog will turn around but I would be happy if you enjoy it.